Me. Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest, became foreign minister and the country’s civilian leader. The military still controlled much of the government, parliament, and economy, but Myanmar was no longer isolated in tropical totalitarianism.
In 2018, Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun sent to Geneva as ambassador and representative in the United Nations offices there. While the halting political transition that has taken place in Myanmar has won admirers such as President Obama, who has visited twice, the reality of the army’s reflexive brutality has permeated with the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, a campaign launched in 2017 sharpened.
Instead of condemning the systematic executions, rapes and town burnings, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winner, defends the generals. There was little shouting in Myanmar about the brutal persecution of ethnic minorities. Ms Aung San Suu Kyi defends the army in The Hague, where Myanmar is accused of genocide on the Rohingya. Myanmar’s diplomats, including Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun, fell in line and earned the country international reproach.
Last October, Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun hands over his credentials as Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the United Nations. Back home, rumors of a coup erupted before the November election, which the National League for Democracy won by a landslide. The army cried foul, and the talk of a putsch increased.
On February 1, the army, led by senior general Min Aung Hlaing, arrested the country’s civilian leadership and later Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the president of the country charged with obscure crimes. Dozens of Foreign Ministry officials were detained after participating in the civil disobedience movement.
In overseas missions, envoys worried about what to do. Daw Chaw Kalyar, now at the Myanmar embassy in Berlin, recalled how, as a high school student, she marched in the 1988 mass protests before security forces killed hundreds or possibly thousands of people. Since the February 1 coup, more than 60 people have been shot dead by security forces.